Nurture your mental wellbeing
Self-connection, or self-care, is about finding practices that help you thrive, and it can include a range of things. It takes purposeful effort, but it can help you maintain or improve your daily mental wellbeing. It can be helpful to think of it as taking time to connect with yourself and
care for yourself as you would others.
Prioritizing time to connect to yourself doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive, and it is important for you to find out what works best for you.
Below are a few different ways to nurture your mental wellbeing, from the Mental Health Coalition:
▪ Physical: Notice and address the stress that shows up in your body. Notice what physical activities reduce or alleviate physical pain, tension and mental stress for you. Some common activities are massages, hugging loved ones with their consent, fitness, dance,
aromatherapy, rest, and boundary setting.
▪ Emotional: Involves tending to your own internal emotional world – especially your mood and feelings. Ways to tend to your emotional self can include connecting with others, naming and acknowledging your emotions, psychotherapy, journaling or creative writing, art, and setting boundaries for your emotional wellbeing.
▪ Cognitive: Engages in activities that are intellectually rewarding and/or stimulating. This can include reading, writing, listening to books or podcasts, watching films, psychotherapy.
▪ Spiritual: This can take many different forms and does not have to be tied to formal religion. It means getting in touch with the less tangible aspects of yourself and the world around you. This can include meditation, breathwork, prayer, connecting with a spiritual or religious community, mantras.
Identify a few ways you’d like to prioritize your own wellbeing. Set aside the time you need to do it, give yourself permission to embrace it if it is hard for you to prioritize yourself, and work towards adding these moments regularly into your life. Know that what taking care of yourself may look like can change over time, and it is okay to adapt to what activities you engage in to fit your needs.
Week 2: Additional Resources
▪ Just like you do things to take care of your body, there are things you can do regularly to tend to your mental wellbeing. This can and will look different for everyone, The JED Foundation (https://jedfoundation.org/practice-self-care/) has a variety of resources to help find ideas to add to your self-care practice. #YouMatterMN
▪ Learning to recognize and name your emotions and know how they show up for you mentally and physically will help you navigate life when your emotions are strong. The Mental Health Coalition has tools for identifying and Dealing with Feelings (https://www.thementalhealthcoalition.org/how-to-deal-with-emotions/).
#YouMatterMN
▪ Being well connected to other people promotes positive mental health and physical health and gives life meaning. Connecting with others is one of the 10 tools for resiliency (https://mhanational.org/ten-tools) that Mental Health America has put together to help you feel stronger and more hopeful. #YouMatterMN
▪ Finding movement that’s a good match for you physically and mentally can help you thrive. Be kind with yourself and your body in the process in learning to move! Explore these videos from the University of Minnesota’s Move + Thrive Project (https://www.youtube.com/@umn_moveandthrive) that features diverse bodies and a variety of movement and meditative practices.
#YouMatterMN
source: https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/mhawarenessmonth.html